1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to electrical power distribution. More particularly, the present invention relates to a power supply system and method for power distribution in a safety-critical power supply network, such as might be provided, for example, in certain aircraft.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is generally well-known to provide power supply networks to distribute power from various power sources to various electrical loads that consume the distributed electrical power [1-4].
However, for certain applications, reliable continuous operation of various of the electrical loads may be critical to safety. For example, in an aircraft it may be necessary to ensure that electric-powered actuators for operating wing surfaces such as ailerons, rudder, flaps, lift dumpers, driver motors for steering systems, thrust reversers, etc., can be operated reliably.
Hence it is known to provide power supply networks that have various design features such as redundancy, load management, etc., to ensure that failures of various generators, or other supply network components, will not shut down all electrical loads coupled thereto [5-12].
Nevertheless, whilst such power supply networks provide an improvement on previous conventional power supplies, there still exist various drawbacks associated with such networks. For example, these networks tend to require complex controller architecture that not only makes such systems difficult to scale up in size, particularly when electrical contactors need to be distributed around an airframe for example, but that also increases the potential for unpredictable faults to occur.